The present invention relates generally to boxes and more particularly to improved pizza (or a similar hot food item) take-out boxes, which minimize the surface area of the box that contacts the pizza.
Pizza take-out boxes are typically formed from a single panel of fiberboard, liner board, corrugated fiberboard, or micro-flute, which is folded by pizza restaurant personnel to form a box having a lid and a tray portion. There are also pizza take-out boxes that are formed from separate lid and tray portions, but they are not as popular. There are pizza boxes of various shapes and sizes such as circles, squares with cut off corners, octagons, etc, boxes for whole pies single slices, etc. Regardless of the shape or how many parts the boxes have, there are certain common goals; to keep the food hot while retaining the desirable characteristics and quality, such as, in the case of pizza, a crispy crust. While this may seem like an easy task, it is not.
Hot pizza produces stream, which condenses and absorbs into the box. Since the pizza rests on the conventional box bottom, the condensation also absorbs into the crust of the pizza. This absorption results in a loss of both crispness (e.g., the pizza crust will become soggy) and product quality (the crust absorbs the taste of the cardboard with the condensation). While cutting vents or holes into the box releases some of the steam and lessens the condensation problem it does not entirely eliminate the problem does nothing for the grease and oil problem and it also causes another; temperature loss. With vents in the box, the pizza crust remains slightly crispier but the pizza now arrives at its destination cold.
In addition to the condensation problem, pizzas that have toppings, such as pepperoni, drip grease which collects in the tray portion of the box resulting in the pizza crust sitting in this grease. This is also not desirable as it causes the pizza crust to become greasy wet and soggy. Venting the box has no effect on this problem.
Conventional pizza boxes have been designed with relatively expensive moisture absorbing materials, variations in the shape of the box and in the number and size of the vents, etc. in an attempt to resolve this issue. Some of the two-piece boxes also employ permanent projections formed in the tray portions in an attempt to raise the crust off of the bottom of the tray. However, these projections are not employed in the one-piece cartons since the permanent projections prevent the boxes from being stacked flat. Other conventional attempts to resolve this issue include relatively expensive metal or plastic trays with permanent projections, etc. There is at least one conventional one-piece pizza box (U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,559), which employs a combination of discrete support strips, which may be individually elevated, and vents which are used to secure the support strips in an elevated position. However, this design requires too many operations to be practical, requires the pizza to be cut before it is placed into the box and requires too many vents, which causes the heat loss problem discussed above. Each of the conventional pizza box designs are either too expensive, too complicated or address one problem while creating an equally unacceptable problem.
Another problem faced by a majority of the conventional pizza boxes is that they are difficult to carry from the bottom due to the fact that the bottom of the box gets very hot from the hot pizza resting on the bottom.
Accordingly there exists a need for an improved pizza take-out box which is relatively inexpensive, maintains a large surface area of the food off of the box, maintains a cool box surface for carrying, can be stored relatively flat and sets up in relatively few steps.